Blackburn Beverley

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Sisemen

Blackburn Beverley

#1 Post by Sisemen » Tue Jan 21, 2020 8:10 am

Just found out that Fort Paull near Hull has suddenly closed. It’s the location of the only surviving Blackburn Beverley airframe.

This airframe cannot be lost!!

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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#2 Post by Woody » Thu Nov 12, 2020 3:40 pm

When all else fails, read the instructions.

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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#3 Post by ian16th » Thu Nov 12, 2020 3:56 pm

Good News, but.............

After being subjected to the weather for so many years, just how corroded is this airframe?
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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#4 Post by PHXPhlyer » Thu Nov 12, 2020 4:37 pm

Good News Indeed! :YMAPPLAUSE: :-bd
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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#5 Post by Boac » Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:01 pm

....Mrs B says I'm in the 'almost' category... :((

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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#6 Post by Undried Plum » Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:10 pm

There used to be a Bev at Southend's museum. Dunno what happened to it.

At Helicopter Hire we had a Widgeon there. Technically, it belonged to the Inland Revenue due to a personal debt owed to them by John Crewdson, but we managed to get it out of hock and get it airworthy again to do a filming job in Mull. It took the ginger beers an entire barrel of WD40 to get all the rotatey bits rotating.

There really ought to be some kind of law obliging owners not to destroy such aircraft, similar to the Listed Building thing.

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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#7 Post by CharlieOneSix » Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:46 pm

Undried Plum wrote:
Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:10 pm
There used to be a Bev at Southend's museum. Dunno what happened to it.
It was XB261 and it suffered a death by JCB in 1989. The cockpit area is the only bit that remains and is in the Newark Air Museum.
XB261.jpg
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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#8 Post by CharlieOneSix » Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:53 pm

Undried Plum wrote:
Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:10 pm


At Helicopter Hire we had a Widgeon there. .....but we managed to get it out of hock and get it airworthy again to do a filming job in Mull.
Was that "When Eight Bells Toll"? It involved filming a Widgeon on Mull and Staffa.
bells4a.jpg
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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#9 Post by ian16th » Thu Nov 12, 2020 7:54 pm

CharlieOneSix wrote:
Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:46 pm
Undried Plum wrote:
Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:10 pm
There used to be a Bev at Southend's museum. Dunno what happened to it.
It was XB261 and it suffered a death by JCB in 1989. The cockpit area is the only bit that remains and is in the Newark Air Museum.

XB261.jpg
That ain't a cockpit!

Its a damn big flight deck for a crew of five (5).
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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#10 Post by Undried Plum » Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:46 pm

CharlieOneSix wrote:
Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:53 pm

Was that "When Eight Bells Toll"? It involved filming a Widgeon on Mull and Staffa.
Yup!.

80 kts from Sahfend to Glenforsa and back.

My bonce continued to rotate around my neckbones at approx 4Hz for days afterwards. The fukkin thing rattled yer teeth, even after the WD40 smoothie treatment.

It had a ruddy great big cyclic that you had to negotiate with like a recalcitrant Soviet army Corporal; and it had a lever that was extremely difficult to persuade that democracy was a rather good idea. It had its own ideas, politically speaking, on what was good up and down and what was a bit opposite.

It was like flying a sack of squirrels who needed to be fed a handful of nuts every fifty minutes and couldn't tell the time on a Timex.

It wuz a piece o' shite in its own way, but it did have bit of magnificence too. But once you learned how to balance its pingpong ball on the back of its cricket bat, it was a babe.

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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#11 Post by 4mastacker » Fri Nov 13, 2020 1:51 pm

My movements course at Abingdon flew on the last scheduled Beverley flight from Abingdon to Wildenrath as part of our course training. Loads of staff officers from 38 Group just happened to be on the flight- conveniently to get their "bottle and 200" just before Xmas. On arrival back at Abingdon, the aircraft was met by a HMC&E rummage crew who examined every last box, bag and case on board. Took over two bloody hours to get off the aircraft. Even after being allowed off the aircraft, we had to hang around on the hangar apron whilst the rummage crew checked every nook and cranny on board looking for contraband. Did they find anything? Don't know, all I wanted to do was to get back to my pit so I could sleep off the raging hangover resulting from a night out in Moenchengladbach.
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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#12 Post by ian16th » Fri Nov 13, 2020 2:06 pm

My 1st contact with the beast was my flight out to Istres, one Friday in Sept 1957.

I was listed as Supernumerary Crew. When I queried this, I was told it was probably because the pilot wasn't qualified to carry pax. [-X

It was also carrying police dogs out to Cyprus. The 1st such shipment since the Sutton Wick incident.
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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#13 Post by Undried Plum » Fri Nov 13, 2020 7:05 pm

Correction to my post #10:

Lima Victor was used in Mull for filming 'Eye of he Needle' on that trip, not Eight bells toll.

John did that film too, also in Mull, but we ferried 'LV' in 1980 for the other film.

I still remember the once per rev bonce-rotating shake and can imitate it right now in my study chair, even though it's 40 years ago.

I haven't got enough fingers and toes to count the number of laws we broke when flying that relic. I do remember updating my Will before the Northbound ferry flight(s).

I do remember our CAA Inspector, Keith S, saying something to the effect of "I can't see that aircraft and I don't want to". Something like that.

Sadly, John died when pencil-whipping of maintenance records bit him in the arse and the Jesus nut stripped its threads. Crashed and burned on a sandbank in the Wash.

Not much relevance to the Bev, other than the fact that the Bev and 'LV were parked alongside eachother for a number of years.

Sorry for the thread drift.

I do recall being tasked to take a hugely wealthy and very famous client's daughter to look around the Bev-containing museum while the bosses were negotiating a quite large contract. She'd just turned 18 and was wearing a provocatively short dress. She insisted that I follow her up the ladder to the flight deck, not the other way around.

I knew naff-all about the layout of the flying/Eng stations of the Beverley, but I started to explain the basics of how primary controls work. She interrupted me, saying: I want you to **** and **** hard.

That's my Beverley story. Out.

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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#14 Post by Alisoncc » Sat Nov 14, 2020 3:28 am

Lots of short flights around Bahrain, Sharjah.....Khormaksar, etc. But the real fun one was from Singers to Oz. Can't remember whether we left from Changi or Tengah on a "nav" exercise in a Bubbly. First stop Butterworth for a refuel, then long haul to Cocos Islands. Broke down and wait for spares a couple of days, then on to Port Hedland Oz. PH to Alice Springs for an overnight. Then Alice to RAAF Laverton, Melbourne. I vaguely remember it taking in excess of a week all told. Imagine a week in a bubbly. Got to see the red centre of Oz, close-up.

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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#15 Post by Boac » Sat Nov 14, 2020 8:11 am

UP - would love to hear more of the 'cockpit' story :)) , but (instead) did you experience the Glenforsa hotel on the airstrip during your sojourns there?

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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#16 Post by Undried Plum » Sat Nov 14, 2020 12:40 pm

Yes, I'd already been to the Glenforsa many times by plankwing. In the 1970's it was our favourite destination for what Septics call a hundred dollar hamburger.

Many many happy memories of that place. And one vicarious one too.

One of our Embra Flying Club members borrowed or rented a C150 from another club member for a dirty weekend with a toothsome tart who resembled BoJo's current squeeze. After a bit too much wine he tried to do a night flight, for no good reason. He crashed into the Sound, swam ashore, tried to walk back to the hotel but was so befuddled by hypothermia that he went completely the wrong way and sat down by a tree and died. His body was found many months later, after lotsa conspiracy theories had been floated about his demise. In a very extreme bit of thread drift I'll try to find a link to a BBC radio programme about his death.

Some time in the 1990s I damn nearly killed myself in a plankwing there. After a rather poorand totally alco-free lunch I walked down to the strip to pinch and drop some grass to figure out which direction to go. There was buggerall wind, but I wanted to know which way was better. Five minutes later I started my takeoff roll. Two chunky pax. The airspeed got up to about 54kts and the main gear oleos were thumping on the endstops but the Cherrytree Worrier just would not go faster. I aborted the departure, braking hard enough to avoid clobbering the fence at the river end of the strip. The wind had changed during my takeoff run and had given me a 20kt tailshove.

Ian H, the owner of that Cessna wot crashed, who is still around so I'll not tell my best Glenforsa story, and I had a very funny incident there. I've got lotsa Ian H stories to tell but they'll have to wait for now. None of them have got anything to do with the Beverley anyway.

I think I've just busted he forum record for thread drift. No doubt Gringo is going to post a completely irrelevant music video in revenge.

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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#17 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Nov 14, 2020 12:59 pm

Undried Plum wrote:
Sat Nov 14, 2020 12:40 pm
Yes, I'd already been to the Glenforsa many times by plankwing. In the 1970's it was our favourite destination for what Septics call a hundred dollar hamburger.

Many many happy memories of that place. And one vicarious one too.

One of our Embra Flying Club members borrowed or rented a C150 from another club member for a dirty weekend with a toothsome tart who resembled BoJo's current squeeze. After a bit too much wine he tried to do a night flight, for no good reason. He crashed into the Sound, swam ashore, tried to walk back to the hotel but was so befuddled by hypothermia that he went completely the wrong way and sat down by a tree and died. His body was found many months later, after lotsa conspiracy theories had been floated about his demise. In a very extreme bit of thread drift I'll try to find a link to a BBC radio programme about his death.

Some time in the 1990s I damn nearly killed myself in a plankwing there. After a rather poorand totally alco-free lunch I walked down to the strip to pinch and drop some grass to figure out which direction to go. There was buggerall wind, but I wanted to know which way was better. Five minutes later I started my takeoff roll. Two chunky pax. The airspeed got up to about 54kts and the main gear oleos were thumping on the endstops but the Cherrytree Worrier just would not go faster. I aborted the departure, braking hard enough to avoid clobbering the fence at the river end of the strip. The wind had changed during my takeoff run and had given me a 20kt tailshove.

Ian H, the owner of that Cessna wot crashed, who is still around so I'll not tell my best Glenforsa story, and I had a very funny incident there. I've got lotsa Ian H stories to tell but they'll have to wait for now. None of them have got anything to do with the Beverley anyway.

I think I've just busted he forum record for thread drift. No doubt Gringo is going to post a completely irrelevant music video in revenge.
Plockton can be fun on its day with a couple of chunky passengers and a bit of warmth in the air. I am searching for a totally irrelevant music video but found this one on the Beverley...



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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#18 Post by ian16th » Sat Nov 14, 2020 1:58 pm

Pumping Oil!
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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#19 Post by CharlieOneSix » Sat Nov 14, 2020 4:17 pm

I've told this story before, not sure if it's on this site, however...

On 15 December 1967 I was returning to Sembawang, Singapore, from a cross country round trip to the north into Malaysia. It was in a Wessex Mk3 and we were hours building on a trials airframe. The weather had deteriorated so we had aborted and at one point we passed a Beverley going low level in the opposite direction. Sadly it didn't make it and XL150 ended up with a CFIT.
https://aviation-safety.net/database/re ... 19671215-0
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Re: Blackburn Beverley

#20 Post by Undried Plum » Sat Nov 14, 2020 5:45 pm

A truly brilliant aircraft for its purpose. Only ever beaten by the Herc.

The Buccaneer was another product which also made the grade as a world-beating flying machine which taught the world about flying machines.

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